This poem is fascinating. I love the language and the all-around wistfulness that surrounds it. The feelings behind it have the air of someone who's lost not only a family, but a lover as well. This is where the speculation comes into play.

After some intense thought, as well as some commiseration with a friend, I've decided that I either have no clue (oh, it happens - trust me), or your poem is talking about Dumbledore regarding his family home after Ariana was killed and Gellert left. Now, the idea that Gellert was the object of Albus's affection is a source of great speculation amongst most of us, fed by JRK saying that he was gay. I would love to know from the source whether this was your intended subject, I'm completely wrong, or you just left it open to interpretation.

One of my pet peeves about poetry (which is probably stupid, considering it's not my best subject) is the rampany misuse of commas and periods, and punctuation (oh, my!). You, however, seem to have put them all in the right places, which allows for fluidic reading and super solid structure. Your metre and stanza formation really allow for this poem to roll off the tongue like speech, rather than something halting and stilted that you would hear in a dodgy coffee shop on a Tuesday night.

The only real crit that I have is the fact that most of your stanzas are four lines or one, but you have two that have only three lines. It does detract a LITTLE bit from your flow, but only a little. It just seems like either a small bit is missing or the two three-lined stanzas could have been consolidated into one.

All in all, this was a fantastic poem and an interesting process by which I could speculate. It's always fun to take anonymous characters in both poetry and prose and try to figure out who it is. I'm sure you had someone in mind, and I'm VERY sure that I'm dying to know who it is, lol.

Take care and happy writing!

~Jess

Author's Response: This is absolutely a poem about Dumbledore and his reaction to Ariana's death and Gellert's flight. If you'd like to give my author's page a go, there are (if I recall correctly >.>) three Albus/Gellert stories and several poems. I didn't label this poem because, as you said, isn't it fun to speculate? Thank you very much for your very thoughtful review.